Usda Sets Strict Standard For `Organic' Foods

WASHINGTON — The Department of Agriculture on Wednesday announced the first national regulatory standards governing the production and handling of organic vegetables, meat and other food products.

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, who unveiled the new measures at a grocery store near the White House, called the rules "the strictest, most comprehensive organic standards in the world."

The new rules set strict, uniform definitions for food to qualify as organic and call for the labeling of organic food products similar to the nutrition labels and USDA inspection labels already in use.

The standards ban the use of genetic engineering in the production of organic foods and prohibit irradiation, the use of sewage sludge fertilizer and chemical pesticides on products that carry the organic label.

Of great importance to millions of consumers, the $6 billion American organic food industry and some 12,200 organic farmers throughout the country, the requirements are officially to take effect in 60 days, though full implementation will take 18 months.

Consumers can expect to start seeing the new organic labels in supermarkets by next summer.

The Agriculture Department received nearly 300,000 public and industry comments since it first proposed standards three years ago. The earlier proposals called for allowing genetically engineered, sewage-sludge fertilized and irradiated foods to be labeled organic.

Organic farming, a supposedly completely natural form of growing and processing food, began in this country on an experimental garden basis in the late 1940s. The method became so popular, especially with health-food consumers, that the number of organic farmers has been increasing at the rate of 12 percent a year. The amount of cropland devoted to organic farming doubled between 1992 and 1997, to 1.3 million acres.

With the industry governed by widely differing standards imposed by about three-fifths of the states, Congress in 1990 passed the Organic Foods Production Act, which called for the Agriculture Department to create a uniform set of national standards.

In his announcement Wednesday, Glickman emphasized that the rules do not guarantee food safety or healthy content.

"It is not a statement about food safety," Glickman said. "Nor is `organic' a value judgment about nutrition or quality. USDA is not in the business of choosing sides, or stating preferences for one kind of food, one set of ingredients or one means of production over any other."

Under the new rules, a food product will have to contain 100 percent organically grown ingredients to be labeled "USDA Organic."

To receive a "Made With Organic Ingredients" label, a product will have to be at least 70 percent organic, not 50 percent as proposed earlier.

Food products containing smaller proportions of organic ingredients may list them along with non-organic ingredients in content labels.

Foods produced by means of genetic engineering will not be allowed to carry the "organic" label, nor will they qualify for "Made With Organic Ingredients" labels even if 70 percent of the ingredients are organic.

Similarly, irradiated foods cannot have the organic label and products will not be able to use the "Organic Ingredients" label even if only non-organic ingredients are irradiated.

The USDA noted that "there is no current scientific evidence that use of irradiation presents unacceptable risks to the environment or human health."

A similar label-denying ban applies to food grown with the use of sewage sludge.

Cattle and other livestock confined in feedlots rather than given access to pasture or range won't qualify for the organic label under the new standard. Neither will livestock given antibiotics.

The use of synthetic chemical pesticides in food production will disqualify the crop for organic labeling, though natural means of controlling weeds and insects will be permitted.